WhyBike Motorcycle Blog

As I was getting blown from side to side in my lane on my commute home I was thinking about what makes a good motorcycle blog.

I have been reading blogs for over a year now, and blogging for about 4 months. Usually I am an early adopter of technology trends but I have to admit, I was late to this party. I was having too much fun in the motorcycle forums. The first blogs I read were about web design and technology. Those writers were used to posting to the web and were comfortable airing their views in cyberspace. As blogging has become more accessable and an accepted form of communication for regular users, more and more people have started to blog. Maybe it is because I am a dog person, but once I saw there were cat blogs, I knew blogging had gone mainstream.

I was a lurker on a couple motorcycle blogs for a while, Bluepoof Bikes and Twisting Asphalt, both fellow Golden State bloggers. Almost immediately I caught the bug and started setting up my own blog. It soon snowballed into more than a blog site and now includes articles from expert contributers and a blog aggregator. As I have collected the feeds from a few dozen blogs focused more or less on motorcycling, I have noticed patterns emerge. You can’t pidgeonhole all the motorcycle blogs I read but most can be lumped into one of three distinct categories.

First you have news reporting blogs. This is the model that has lifted blogging to a household word. They will pick up a story or technology innovation and write an editorial about it. What follows is generally an online discussion and the occasional flame war.

Then you have the blogs I call “everyday-ers". These writers chronicle their day to day activities, rides, general maintenence, kind of like a public diary. The best are the ones that serve as a warning to others of what not to do.

The last are what I call “storytellers". These writers, and I would put myself in this category more than the others, take motorcycle events in their life and relate it to society or how it changed their lives.

Keep an eye on the the motorcycle blogs for posts sure to interest anybody. And if you are a blog lurker, take a second to comment. We like to know that SOMEONE is reading our stuff and we always respect a fellow biker’s perspective.

Like you, I am a blog lurker also. I especially frequent the few biker blogs out there. I enjoy your blog and hope you keep it up. I enjoy storytellers, yet I am more technically oriented, but find much of the technical writing out here confusing.

Like you, I was a late-comer to the blog-phenomenon. Actually, I started my first blog a few years ago, but abandoned it a couple weeks later after I couldn’t find any material write about!

But I got back into blogging about 6 months ago, and really like it. However, it’s difficult to find a groove you can really get into. I tried to be more of a news blogger, reporting on what’s in the news, and even trying to report stuff that no one else was reporting. But that’s tough to keep up over several months, let alone years. Eventually, you want to just ride your bike, instead of blogging all day.

I think Biker News Online will become less of a “daily” blog, and focus specifically on my riding experiences and what other news that no one else is reporting.

Pretty neat.. I started bloggin abt 7 months ago. And after having done some gr8 mountain riding this summer planning to separated the biking adventures from the main blog and starting a separate one for that..